One Last Kindness

What is a man?

If there are stupid questions in the classroom of life, that must qualify as one. Too simple, too crass. For...surely we must know by now. Even those of us who aren't human are around them enough—(and 'enough' is too much)—to come up with some sort of answer.

Despite all this, this question, perhaps the single question whose answer must come easiest to our lips—muscle memory instead of something to think about—is one even those who are human find difficulty in answering. So simple it's complicated, like saying the the answer to a another question: "I'm not okay." Too many facets, too many reflections cast on the wall by a single gemstone.

Vlad finds himself asking that question more often than he should.

Dracula was a man once. And maybe that means he ought to know the answer. But when you live long enough as something slightly to the left of human—not far, but removed enough to scorn humanity and their faults as something other—you tend to forget that fact. You tend to forget that you were one of them once. You tend to forget the answer to that question.

He tried to. Remember, that is. He actively tried to remember the answer. Or come up with a new one.

Because of her. Because Lisa wanted him to.

She told him she would teach him how to be human again. Love a woman. Raise a child. Travel the world. She'd take this thing, dark, and monstrous, and extraordinary, and make him mortal. Make him see the answer in the faceless mirrors. She would change that label into conversation, until that question, its answer, rested comfortably in his quiet mind.

That's what he's been doing. Loving her. As a man. Putting her picture upon his castle's walls. Staying in a little cottage by the creek. Raising a child. As a man. Bouncing him on his knee. Teaching him all he knows. Traveling the world. As a man. Asking to be invited. Wearing simple cloaks instead of royal robes. Curbing a thirst, a disdain, that once drove his every action into refined honor.

As a man. That phrase was once so soft, now rumbles low in the back of his mind, an incessant humming that increased in volume until it was loud enough, constant enough to make anyone mad.

That question, the answer, was clearing, pond stagnance into a river's clear tones, slowly—(everything was slow with them, wasn't it?)—and he could almost see the answer on the river floor.

But when he walks into the village of Lupu, expecting to return home, like a soldier from his own personal war, to a quaint cottage, a beautiful wife, whose face he hasn't seen in far too long, and a son who has grown far too much in the time he was away...and finds a few drops of blood and a pile of charcoal—

A rock is thrown into the water, making those years of clarity murky again, and he forgets there was ever anything human in him.

...Either that, or he remembers far too well.

And everything that clouded his eyes before flares up with a vengeance, turning his gaze red once again.

"Where happened?" his voice burns in his throat, this question, and the other, rotting his lungs, his heart, "Where is my wife?"

"Ohh." The woman's voice is feeble, like a wisp of the smoke surrounding them, "The Bishop took her. Witchcraft, he said. They're burning her at the stake." He doesn't like how she says it like it's already done, already too late. "She was good to me, your wife. A good doctor. It's not right what happened."

"Where are they holding her?" his hair falls across his eyes, "The Cathedral?"

"Oh. Oh, no, sir. They'll be burning her now." The woman's voice is far too gentle to say a truth so violent.